Among the many drugs Sean “Diddy” Combs allegedly consumed — and had his staff procure for him — was tuci, an obscure street drug concoction nicknamed “pink cocaine,” according to a lawsuit filed by his former producer Rodney Jones.
Jones, who alleged Combs sexually assaulted him while he was producing Comb’s “The Love Album,” filed the $30 million lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan in February, amending it with additional allegations earlier this week.
Jones saId Combs’ chief of staff Kristina Khorram “required all employees, from the butler to the chef to the housekeepers, to walk around with a black Prada pouch or fanny pack filled with cocaine, GHB [a depressant drug], ecstasy [sometimes sold as MDMA], marijuana gummies (100 - 250 mg’s each), and tuci (a pink drug that is a combination of ecstasy and cocaine).”
“Khorram wanted Mr. Combs' drug of choice immediately ready when he asked for it,” the lawsuit alleges.
Last April, Combs and Jones were rehearsing for the Something in the Water music festival in Virginia, when Jones alleged Combs did some cocaine in his dressing room and wanted tuci. However, Brendan Paul, Combs’ alleged drug mule who is facing felony drug possession charges, forgot to bring tuci, so Khorram had rapper Yung Miami fly the drug from Miami on Combs’ jet, according to the lawsuit.
Through his lawyer Shawn Holley, Combs denied the claims outlined in the initial lawsuit, describing them as “pure fiction.”
But what is tuci in the first place – and why is it popping off as a party drug in some circles?
The little-known drug has cropped up in the Latin American street drug supply over the last few years, typically sold as a neon pink powder, according to a 2022 report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. While the name, also spelled tusi and tucci may be a shortened version of 2C-B — a stimulant and psychedelic first synthesized in the 1970s — tested samples of tuci typically don't contain 2C-B, but rather a mix of ketamine, MDMA and caffeine. Despite being nicknamed “pink cocaine,” it rarely contains cocaine, though it is typically snorted.
While it’s hard to quantify how much tuci is entering the North American drug supply, it has been detected in Vancouver, New York, Miami and in several European countries. Services in Europe and Canada that test street drugs have issued alerts about tuci, warning people that it’s very difficult to predict its true contents.
“It can contain any drug. Every batch is different,” said U.K-based drug checking service the Loop, in a tuci warning to drug users in August 2022. “Be extra cautious if mixing drugs because you might not know how you will react to that mixture.”
In a text blast viewed by Salon, a New York-based dealer recently advised customers he was selling “something new” called “ducey,” which he described as “pink euphoric snow.” (Snow is a nickname for cocaine.)
Get Your Drugs Tested, a Vancouver-based harm reduction service, said a sample of tuci they tested last weekend came back positive for MDMA, ketamine and multiple benzodiazepines (sedative drugs like Xanax.)
A Toronto-based journalist, who requested anonymity, told Salon she frequently encountered people using tuci while backpacking in Medellin, Colombia in December.
“It was like a combination of stuff that dealers had leftover that wasn’t enough to make up a gram but they would combine it and dye it pink and make it marketable and then sell it,” she said.
At a party one night in late December, she said several people were on tuci and seemed “really happy.”
“It looked like an intense MDMA high, they were super sweaty, dancing,” she said.
However, one man in the group had a bad reaction to the drug, and was unable to stand or sit up straight for hours.
“His eyes were rolling to the back of his head,” she said. “He kept trying to throw up but he couldn’t throw up, couldn’t really get words out … That’s what kind of scared me.”
A 2023 VICE documentary on tuci in Medellin found sales of the drug was so lucrative there, it has spawned a new wave of traffickers dubbed neo-narcos, selling grams for $10 to $16 each. Matt Shea, the host of the documentary, uncovered how dyeing this random mixture of drugs pink is little more than marketing strategy concocted by cartels and described the substance as a “frankenstein drug.”
Jones’ lawsuit didn’t detail how often Combs consumed tuci, but said Khorram ordered her assistants to keep Combs “high” off gummies and pills. Jones also accused Combs and his associates, described by the lawsuit as “the Combs Rico Enterprise,” of procuring, transporting and distributing ecstasy, cocaine, GHB, ketamine, marijuana, mushrooms and tuci in and around the U.S.
While Paul has been arrested, and federal agents have raided two of Combs’ homes, Combs has not yet been charged with any crimes.
